Chapter 6: The Public Debut

The woman pulled the laces tight and I made a sound like I'd been punched.

Because honestly. That's what it felt like.

The thing under the dress wasn't fabric. It was body armor. Stiff and heavy and so tight around my ribs that breathing became something I had to think about instead of something that just happened. Every breath was a negotiation. A small careful conversation between me and my own lungs about how much air we were actually going to get.

Not much. The answer was not much.

And on top of the armor was the dress.

Dark red velvet. Heavy. It touched the floor all the way around and the weight of it pulled at my shoulders constantly like a gentle reminder that this was not my life and these were not my clothes and I had absolutely no business being inside either of them.

I kept thinking about my jacket.

My canvas jacket hanging on the back of my door in Sector Four. Worn through at both elbows. Smelled like engine grease and the particular dust of the outer rim. I had owned it for four years and it fit the way things fit when they had been through enough with you to give up trying to be anything other than comfortable.

I would have given a lot for that jacket right now.

The diamond choker the woman clicked around my throat didn't feel like jewelry. It felt like something else. Something that had a different word for it that I didn't want to use.

I looked at myself in the mirror.

I didn't recognize the person looking back.

She looked like she belonged somewhere. Like she had always belonged somewhere. Like she had been to places like wherever we were going and would go again and it was all completely normal and fine.

None of that was true.

None of it.

I was a mechanic from Sector Four who had been in this building for one day and had spent most of that day bleeding on various floors. I didn't belong anywhere near whatever tonight was. I didn't belong in this dress or this armor or these diamonds. I belonged in my jacket on my street with my father checking in every four hours like clockwork.

But my father was in a medical room somewhere in this building.

And the man who had put him there was standing in the doorway.

Varek looked at my reflection in the mirror. Not at my face. At the whole picture. Taking stock the way he took stock of everything fast and thorough and giving nothing back.

"Full breath?" he said.

"Barely," I said.

"Good." His eyes moved to the woman. She read the look and left. "The trauma plates are seated right."

He put his hands on my bare shoulders. His palms were rough. Scratchy against my skin. Like hands that had been used hard for a long time and hadn't been particularly gentle about it.

"You're the Sovereign Bride tonight," he said. "You don't flinch. You don't look at the floor. You let them look at you and you let them understand what it costs to touch you."

I looked at his hands on my shoulders in the mirror.

"And if someone touches me anyway," I said.

"Then I handle it," he said.

He dropped his hands and walked out.

Right. Okay. Fine. Simple.

I was going to walk into a room full of the most dangerous people in Vespera wearing armor under a dress that cost more than my apartment and diamonds around my throat and stand next to a man who had kidnapped me yesterday and smile.

Completely normal. Totally fine. Not going crazy at all.

The drop off under the Cinder Club was loud and bright and overwhelming all at once.

The doors of the SUV opened and it all hit me at the same time. Camera flashes going off so fast they blurred. The smell of too many perfumes fighting each other. People packed behind barriers on both sides shouting things I couldn't make out. The cold underground air mixed with dry ice and exhaust and I just stood there for a second blinking like an animal that had walked out of one world straight into another.

Which was exactly what I was.

Varek didn't offer his arm.

He put his hand on my waist and walked me forward. Heavy and certain. Like he already knew exactly where we were going and I was just coming with him whether I was ready or not.

"Keep your teeth together," he said near my ear. "They're looking for a crack."

We went down the wide black stairs into the main room.

The music kept playing. But the talking stopped.

All of it. All at once. Like someone had cut a wire.

Five hundred people turned to look at us and I felt every single one of them land on me at the same time and I wanted very badly to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. My apartment. The outer rim. A drainage ditch in Sector Four. Anywhere that wasn't here with five hundred pairs of eyes doing something to me that I couldn't name but that felt a lot like being measured for something I didn't want to be measured for.

They didn't look friendly.

They didn't look unfriendly either.

They looked like they were running numbers. Cold and quiet and completely without warmth. Like accountants deciding something.

I kept my teeth together.

Varek shifted slightly. Put his shoulder between me and the biggest group of men across the room. He didn't make a thing of it. He just moved and suddenly his body was blocking the angle and I understood that he had done it on purpose and I didn't know what to do with that information so I filed it and kept walking.

We moved through the room and it parted.

Men in expensive suits stepping back. Not much. Just enough. The way people stepped back from something they weren't sure about yet.

A waiter appeared. Varek took two glasses without looking and handed me one.

The glass was ice cold. My fingers were shaking badly enough that the champagne moved inside it. I gripped it tighter.

Tor appeared at Varek's shoulder from nowhere the way Tor always appeared from nowhere.

"South loading dock," Tor said. Barely moving his lips. "Breached."

Varek's jaw went tight. He looked at me. "Back against this pillar. Don't move."

He didn't check if I nodded. He and Tor just turned and disappeared into the crowd and were gone.

And I was alone.

In a room full of five hundred people who would probably kill me if they knew what I was.

Which I didn't even fully know yet.

The air conditioning hit my bare back the second Varek's frame stopped blocking it. Goosebumps everywhere. I pressed my back against the pillar and held the champagne glass and kept my face still and looked at the room and thought

I have been awake for how long now. I have been zip-tied and thrown in a car and dragged through a basement and shot at and now I am standing in a room full of people in diamonds being looked at like I am something interesting and dangerous.

Yesterday I was fixing engines.

Yesterday was a completely different life.

Someone stepped into the empty space on my right.

Clove smoke and mint. He didn't say hello. He just tapped his glass against mine like we were old friends. The small sound of it cut right through the noise of the room.

I took a sip of my drink first. Made him wait.

Then I looked.

White suit. Slightly wrinkled. Pale skin. Deep dark circles under his eyes. Smiling but his gray eyes were doing something completely different from smiling.

"Red is a brave choice," he said. Quiet and dry. "For your own funeral."

I looked back at the room instead of at him.

"You'd know about funerals I imagine," I said.

He laughed. A small rattling sound. Wrong somehow. Like something loose in his chest.

"Syris," he said. Like he was used to watching what happened when he said it.

I kept my face still.

And thought Of course there's a man named Syris at this party and he found me the second Varek left now this is happening.

Like seriously give m a break.